Endeavour

Yonks ago Robin Smith got invited to represent the Hurricanes.

Dart 16....Shudders....Wonder if we could get the Laser center to sponser it....

More like he's just lining up his next victim ...

A full report is now online with 30 photos

Clicky

As you can see from my original post, the line in bold was not something I realistically thought I'd hear / read - of course, he did do it! 

Nonetheless, a good weekend was made excellent because

• All three boats from my club - Yorkshire Dales SC - were in the top 10 (Vortex. Scorpion, RS500)
• I got a message from the YDSC treasurer saying that the club had just been awarded a Sport Council lottery grant for £245000 - Yahoo - a clubhouse with showers next year (currently portacabins / portaloos).
• Meeting my crew for first time on Friday - I knew straight away that we were going to have a fun weekend - regardless of results - and we certainly did.

Hi Folks

Well a weekend of very close racing and very close finishes on the water. Steve and Toby sailed a sublime event, recovering more than once from potentially disasterous starts to races. As some fell by the wayside, they held their series together.

As Rick and Hector have said, the racing was a case of rock and roll with boats gaining or losing many places on one decision. In Race 7 as http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/photos/?s=64&PID=24620 shows, the first 4 boats went down the right bank of the river on the run and were dumped to the back third by the leeward mark with only RS Feva getting back to a respectable position of 13th. Unfortunately for us this happened on three occasions but we were not the only ones to see this happen.

If going to the event in the future, try and get a go in either a Xenon or similar craft prior to attending as they are very different in their handling to anything I personally have sailed. They are hard to judge for acceleration and deceleration (rumour hull weight 130 kg) and so take some getting used to. So the training with Adam on Friday is a must. Few of the teams that normally sail the performance classes only, showed well. We particularly struggled to get to grips with the Xenon's handling characteristics as did many others, The slowest boat we now sail is a Merlin Rocket and this is by many classes performance a fast boat which handles incredibly well. The margins between success and mediocre at this level is very small and adapting to boat and very good tactics in the conditions is everything. In windier conditions the results may have been very different.

Int 14 sailors Rob and Pete got 2 OCSs starting at the pin end and it seems decided they had had enough and so headed home on Saturday evening.

The service offered by Topper could not be faulted and thanks Russ for the new lowers on Sunday (others to short (suppliers fault)). KIm and his team did a really good job on the water and Edwin's shore team managed us well ashore.

Definetly worth attending but make sure you take some Duck Tape, 5mm elastic and hiking shorts (we did not) as you will need them.

Bye for now.